Weed is the UK’s favourite illegal drug. An estimated half a million people use it for medicinal purposes, and many more just to get high. But while countries around the world move to decriminalise or even fully legalise smoking and growing weed – and in the face of British police de-prioritising the policing of cannabis – the UK’s government refuses to budge. When over 200,000 people signed a petition last year calling on Westminster to make the production, sale and use of weed legal, the government responded with a flat-out no.

In this episode of High Society Vice explore how that approach to the issue shapes the UK’s weed culture, meeting growers, medical users, politicians and a couple of thieves in Birmingham who have come up with a novel way to make money off the country’s cannabis trade.